Quest On

It's intense for me these days. At work, I am trying to withstand multiple death-by-a-thousand-cuts relating to sampling events that all involve the same limited staff and want to occupy the same tight time-frame. Everyone wants me to quote them a firm date, but none will commit to their end of the bargain. This isn't a Deal, this is Larceny. A multi-dimensional game of chicken. Oh yeah, nothing I'd love more than changing that acronym after your name in a document backwater at the last minute. Why not?

[G. Brown: "Stuff with no knowledge just won't get you there."]

Dad was scheduled for removal of his cancerous bladder last Monday. The plan was to remove also-cancerous (but long-controlled) prostate. But the bladder-cancer proved on inspection to have spread so much that removal was not practical. We are moving on to radio- and chemo-therapy. And, naturally, some tears and (thanks so much, Mary!) talk about what will and will not be done.

Dad was looking and acting a lot more cheery when I saw him today, on the brink of having an appetite that might handle solid food. We talked about a multitude of subjects, including our mutual involvement in mountain-climbing course way back when, serpentine and other sub-mafic rocks, as has always been the case in the past, given our mutual never-satisfied curiosity on so many topics, and I hope and expect we will be doing more of that soon.

It's Not Dead Yet

This, via Digby, seems to me the best I have heard Obama speak on Health Care Reform since he was elected. Do check out the original, where you can view moving video. Certainly this is the best and clearest statement in favor of a full public option in many months of vociferation, lying by the lobbyists and congressional they have purchased, and largely nonjournalism:

John Amato writes:

Fox News is telling us that the public option is dead and the do-nothing Republicans are calling for it to be gone, but in a huge speech Saturday that took place to a fired-up campaign-style crowd in Minnesota, Obama was as strong on the public option as I've ever heard him.

Listen to the crowd cheer wildly over the idea of a public option. If he's so against the public option, then why did he stand as strong as he did in this speech? The bottom line is that if the president wants it, then he can get it done.

Yes he can!